


She Has Your Eyes

by Laiska



Category: AFK Arena (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Epistolary, M/M, Pining, no one asked for angst about a mobile game but by Dura here we are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 18:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20934830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laiska/pseuds/Laiska
Summary: I hope that this letter finds you, wherever you may be. (A letter to a beloved, nearer than one knows and yet so long gone.)





	She Has Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Found upon a desk in the chambers of a castellan of the house of Rayne, written in unsteady form in ink half-dried and splotched with something faint, unaddressed and unsent.

* * *

My dearest and most intimate friend,

Perhaps you would find it folly that I should pen a letter with no destination. No courier will carry this without a mark of postage, no king's envoy take it in his satchel without someone whom he might announce it to on the other side, and not even an errand boy hired from the village square would carry it, tucked haphazardly between the patched pockets of his trousers for a coin, until it slips out as he runs, and drifts down to the river, to be soaked, and muddied, and washed away to sea. As I now ponder the fancy, however, perhaps that would be the surest outcome yet. For my words to be swept away and set adrift and carried to the corners of the world, where perhaps they might find you, for I know that no arms but Our Lady's own might reach the distance I am trapped away from you.

You might wonder now why I write you, when I have been so long gone without a single word. From the bottommost depths of my heart I beg penance, for it was not by my intention. Grief has stilled my hand these passing years, and it is a shaking one at that as you must forgive. I never took as well to relearning the wielding of a pen as I did a blade.

Yet all my excuses and my hesitation are veil, and you will know as well as any that I have always chosen action over empty word. I give you my report today as I could never give, as you abandoned me before I could ever speak word to you again, a slight that, dear friend, I must admit stings me yet with an ache that ripples through my bones. It burns me still more that I cannot find it in myself to condemn you this treachery, but I would be remiss not to make you aware of what you have done to me.

She has your eyes.

I could say much of her learning, how she has grown, her passion and her rebellion and her devotion to duty and all the echoes of you I see in that tender form, but in most earnest truth, all I can see when I look upon her is that fire burning in her core, glimmering through the innocent azure. Her flame burns her from within, and as it scalds my skin whenever I draw near her I know it is you stoking it. It is devilry to hide in her shadow as you do, watching me from just unseen, taunting me, in all the ways that she speaks the words you would speak, acts as you would act, all the while knowing that though I love her as dearly as my own, my heart could never beat for her in the way it did for you. For such a noble man, the depths of your cruelty can be endless.

They told me what became of you only after much cajoling, perhaps thinking that visiting sorrow upon me would slow my healing, a diagnosis I find foolish in principle but with which I cannot disagree, much as I would tell myself I am stronger. They told me that you were left there, that their stretchers and their arms were too full with the injured living. That they could not busy themselves with the dead until the last had fallen. I demanded to be let to seek you myself when they told me they could not find your body. I swore at them for forgetting the very land on which our battle had been waged, where the noble blood of Rayne was spilled, even knowing well as you that carnage can never be told from carnage, and that by that time all that might be found would be no more than broken crest, and wriggling vermin feasting under flesh.

You will think me the most slovenly warrior in the world, for as you were losing yourself in the name of our people I slumbered through the final throes of battle. My dreams are beyond recollection, but though you will call me tender, dear friend, I would swear that I was lying beside you, in the fields of Alyrr, your fingertips entwined in mine. I could think of the deepness of your laugh, like a stone cool echo in the chapel of my heart, and the sun-warmed glow of your cheeks. You must satiate my curiosity, my dearest--Has your body been remade whole in the places beyond? It would pain me to think of the loss of that charming gap in your smile.

I digress, as my imaginings are but fancies, and shall always be, no matter how I pine for your touch. My longing for the brush of your breath on my ear shall never conjure up your whispers, and thoughts of the angles of your back would never bring to life the illusory clay from which my mind sculpts every inch of you, a feeble artisan in mockery of Our Lady's own hand.

She has your eyes, my beloved, and she has your strength, but she has not your soul, and for all my love for her, at times that fire she burns is a searing brand, awling itself deep into my chest as a reminder of what I can no longer have while in this world. Would that it would cauterize my heart, to seal away emotions, that my thoughts would no longer so fervently dwell upon you. Yet, for all it pains, it would do me the greatest dishonor, and you the grandest of offence, if I were not to give all that I have to the raising of her. In that you have my promise. Your daughter is bold, Baden. She walks with the Light, and she shines with a brightness that has oh so seldom ever been reflected in this world. The deeds she will achieve will surpass anything that you and I ever dreamed of.

I miss you, my dearest friend. All my days will forever be saddled with want for what once filled the void you left within me, but I shall not be unhappy. The man who pities self over serves his duty causes naught but strife for anyone who knows him. Be assured that I shall serve your memory well, and do try not to play on my thoughts any more than is fair. Though I am forever fond of your teasing, for once please spare me this cruelty.

I miss you, I say once more, and I love you. May Our Lady give you strength, and may she grant me respite, until the day that our fingertips might once more intertwine.

Yours, my Lord, eternally and faithfully,

Thane


End file.
